President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Michael_ Gee · Dec 1, 2020

BTExpress said: ↑

Half of it was LOANS, not a grant. And it came with a lot of strings: no buybacks of shares until one year after loans are repaid, continuation of service, no layoffs UNTIL Sept. 30.

And 90,000 were not "laid off." About 35,000 were. A ton more took early retirement. And four airlines went out of business entirely.

Shortening it kind of undercuts the whole "Biden will be woefully behind/Trump's refusal to concede puts our national security at risk" moaning. Which is fine. It was just something extra to bitch about, anyway.

It would help matters if a new president didn't have to appoint 4,000 positions upon taking office. I mean, does Biden REALLY need to name a new Ambassador to Benin?
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Making ambassadorships a civil service job for career State Dept. employees selected by the President would be a real step towards better government no President, Democrat or Republican, would ever support. I suppose there are some embassies where the other country is important enough to have an ambassador with the political clout to speak to the President directly, like China, but those are few and far between. The ambassador's house in Paris is great, but it shouldn't be a reward for giving your party megabucks.

Baron Scicluna · Dec 1, 2020

Della9250 said: ↑

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And some of them voted for the hyphen.

Mngwa · Dec 1, 2020

outofplace said: ↑

The problem is that transition does take time, and that becomes an even bigger issue if the new president is relatively inexperienced. That probably wouldn't be much of an issue this time around with President-Elect Biden, but what about someone like Barack Obama?

I get wanting to make the presidency Trump proof, but the person in that office is always going to be able to do quite a bit of damage if they choose. I'm not sure you can fix that without crippling the office in some way.
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You raise valid issues. It all comes back to the fact that to the history of this country the people who have assumed the office the presidency have, for the most part, observed behavioral norms that did not jeopardize the country. We never knew how vulnerable we were until Trump became president

garrow · Dec 1, 2020

FlynnTrumpsupportersayswhat

Neutral Corner · Dec 1, 2020

Got to love the Rick Scott number. Scuzzier than Trump.

Spartan Squad · Dec 1, 2020

Mngwa said: ↑

You raise valid issues. It all comes back to the fact that to the history of this country the people who have assumed the office the presidency have, for the most part, observed behavioral norms that did not jeopardize the country. We never knew how vulnerable we were until Trump became president
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You're not wrong. We already moved the inauguration from March to January because, among other reasons, travel got better. We do need a transition time, but it could be shorter without hindering the newcomer too much because a lot of the planning can be started before the election, especially if the incumbent isn't running.

That said, you can't move it as much as I think you are proposing. First, you need to allow states time to certify elections. If there are legitimate challenges, that date gets pushed into the grace period allowed. Then you actually need to get the EVs together. And you need to allow for there not being a clear EV winner. Yeah that hasn't happened since 1876, but one faithless elector in 2000 would have done it. And you run into holidays.

3_Octave_Fart · Dec 1, 2020

Ivanka wishes she had a fraction of the cool, the icy intelligence, the mystique

Chloë Sevigny Is the New Mom on the Block

heyabbott · Dec 1, 2020

2muchcoffeeman · Dec 1, 2020

The Big Ragu said: ↑

The stock market's gains had little to do with Trump. On balance, he may have actually been a net negative with the uncertainty he creates and the trade war lunacy. The flip side is that our government, which already was deficit spending in an insane way, upped it even more under Trump, which would juice markets.

That has only gone on as long as it has because we have a central bank that exists entirely to monetize runaway debt at this point. And the stock market's gains since the financial crisis have entirely been a monetary phenomenon. The Federal Reserve, and other central banks around the world, have created a debt bubble. It costs less than zero to borrow, and that creates runaway speculation. Their actions have gotten more radical in response to the pandemic. When Ben Bernanke did the first quantitative easing (creating money out of thin air and buying up U.S. sovereign and agency debt), we were talking about hundreds of billions of dollars over years. Now they are doing that monthly. They have made the stock market (and high-yield debt and real estate and other risk assets) into a casino, and they are essentially feeding free gambling chips into it, recklessly. It was entirely predictable, too, because the mountain of debt they have enabled over the last 20 years or so requires expontentially more debt to keep the bubble they created from bursting. And they will make the crisis as bad as possible before they lose control, because there is no way out from the mess they created.

There is no reason why Biden would crash markets at this point. As much as the government ran up debt beyond anything we had seen before under Trump, the expectation is that Biden will push for "stimulus" (i.e. trillions of dollars of debt-fueled spending that ends up feeding Amazon's bottom line) beyond what we have already seen. And then he announced Janet Yellen as the Treasury secretary, wiht amn implict wink to markets that the Treasury is going to work WITH the Fed to run up debt and try to monetize it at the expense of the dollar. More of the same, but on a yet grander scale. And the prospect of that gets equity markets euphoric -- the Fed is feeding insane liquidity into the markets, under the guise of "monetary stimulus" and meanwhile millions of people are on food lines while the people who have the wealth to avail themselves of the "free money" are running up asset prices and getting richer.

Two things about this: 1) In a free market (not what we have created), stocks are discounting mechanisms that are a function of expectations about future earnings. There are lots of ways you can look at whether they are valued correctly, one being a price to earnings ratio. What has happened is that earnings have declined, economic growth has declineed. ... and stocks are euphoric, so that those price to earnings ratios (especially on a trailing basis) are way beyond even the bubbles that led to things like the 1929 or 1987 or 2008 stock market problems. So the question is how big can they blow a bubble (well beyond anything I ever thought possible) and for how long. 2) The BS around the Federal Reserve -- which exists entirely to monetize debt -- has always been that it is "independent" and that it doesn't just shit all over the dollar (even though the dollar has lost more than 98 percent of its value since the Fed was formed), but in good times it works in the opposite direction. At the same time, the official line of the Treasury has always been that the U.S. has a strong dollar policy. With the Fed having subverted our debt markets, acting as a price-fixing czar ,to enable more and more debt at the expense of the dollar, and this promise that Janet Yellen is going to work WITH the Fed, they no longer even throw out the BS rhetoric. The stock market loves what it is hearing right now and will go euphoric. ... until the debt bubble bursts and a lot of people are going to get wiped out. What I don't get is why the half or more of people who have gotten left behind in the wealth disparity economy they have created don't revolt. They talk like a weak dollar is great for America (it's great for politicians who have no fiscal discipline and for companies that live on piles of debt), but for the life of me, I will never understand how people don't understand that when they earn a dollar, the Fed is activiely robbing them. The dollar is already losing value, and is worth less, by the time you cash your paycheck.
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TLDR: It’s the Federal Reserve’s fault.

TigerVols · Dec 1, 2020

The Big Ragu said: ↑

Trump Raises $170 Million as He Denies His Loss and Eyes the Future
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Every dollar came from a fool; fine by me if Trump manages to double or triple the take, as that might keep him from stealing the silverware as he leaves.

TigerVols · Dec 1, 2020

garrow said: ↑

FlynnTrumpsupportersayswhat

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I kinda hope Moscow Mitch and his merry band of aggrieved white men and the racist women who love them block all of Biden’s appointments. Nothing will put an end to Biden’s penchant for quixotic bipartisanship dreams quicker.

goalmouth · Dec 1, 2020

A historic criminal mob. Thanks for voting!

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President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

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